Elia and The Last Essays of Elia / Charles Lamb, by Charles Lamb

Distant Correspondents; in a Letter to B.f. Esq. At Sydney, New South Wales

My dear F. — When I think how welcome the sight of a letter from the world where you were born must be to you in
that strange one to which you have been transplanted, I feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But,
indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary world of waters between us
oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort
of presumption to expect that one’s thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of
one of Mrs. Rowe’s superscriptions, “Alcander to Strephon, in the shades.” Cowley’s Post–Angel is no more than would be
expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at Lombard-street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in Cumberland
gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only like whispering through a long trumpet. But suppose a tube let down
from the moon, with yourself at one end, and the man at the other; it would be some balk to the spirit of
conversation, if you knew that the dialogue exchanged with that interesting theosophist would take two or three
revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I know, you may be some parasangs nigher that primitive
idea — Plato’s man — than we in England here have the honour to reckon ourselves.

Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all
non-serious subjects; or subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my fashion, non-seriously. — And first, for
news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security can I have that
what I now send you for truth shall not before you get it unaccountably turn into a lie? For instance, our mutual
friend P. is at this present writing —my Now— in good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputation.
You are glad to hear it. This is natural and friendly. But at this present reading —your Now— he may possibly
be in the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason ought to abate something of your transport (i.e. at
hearing he was well, &c.), or at least considerably to modify it. I am going to the play this evening, to have a
laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, I think you told me, in your land of d —— d realities. You naturally lick your
lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and you will correct the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday morning
with you, and 1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two presents, is in a degree common to
all postage. But if I sent you word to Bath or the Devises, that I was expecting the aforesaid treat this evening,
though at the moment you received the intelligence my full feast of fun would be over, yet there would be for a day or
two after, as you would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which would give rational
encouragement for you to foster a portion at least of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my intention to
produce. But ten months hence your envy or your sympathy would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. Not only
does truth, in these long intervals, unessence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction for the
fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I put upon you, some three years
since —— of Will Weatherall having married a servant-maid! I remember gravely consulting you how we were to receive her
— for Will’s wife was in no case to be rejected; and your no less serious replication in the matter; how tenderly you
advised an abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a caution not to be too forward in bringing
on the carpet matters more within the sphere of her intelligence; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise suspension
of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects; whether the conscious
avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not have a worse look than the taking of them casually in our way; in
what manner we should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall being by; whether we should show more
delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will’s wife, by treating Becky with our customary chiding before her, or by
an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a
humble station. There were difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you did me the favour to state with the
precision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when lo!
while I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous possibly of
any lie-children not his own, or working after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three days since) to
the commission of a matrimony, which I had only conjured up for your diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs.
Cotterel’s maid. But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from me must become history to
you; which I neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for reading. No person, under a diviner, can with any
prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such an arm’s length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus interchange
intelligence with effect; the epoch of the writer (Habbakuk) falling in with the true present time of the receiver
(Daniel); but then we are no prophets.

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that. This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot;
or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is
the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling
somewhere about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically
and invitingly over a stream — was it? — or a rock? — no matter — but the stillness and the repose, after a weary
journey ’tis likely, in a languid moment of his lordship’s hot restless life, so took his fancy, that he could imagine
no place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his bones in. This was all very natural and excusable as a
sentiment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But when from a passing sentiment it came to be an act;
and when, by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried all that way from England; who was
there, some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the question, Why could not his lordship have found a
spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in
Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom House (startling
the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and handled between the rude jests of
tarpaulin ruffians — a thing of its delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged
lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a
fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser’s
purpose!) but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall we say? —
I have not the map before me — jostled upon four men’s shoulders — baiting at this town — stopping to refresh at
t’other village — waiting a passport here, a license there; the sanction of the magistracy in this district, the
concurrence of the ecclesiastics in that canton; till at length it arrives at its destination, tired out and jaded,
from a brisk sentiment, into a feature of silly pride or tawdry senseless affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F.,
I am afraid we can set down, in the sailor’s phrase, as quite sea-worthy.

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should
irradiate a right friendly epistle — your puns and small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in their
sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce endure to be
transported by hand from this room to the next. Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment for
their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of the bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of Nilus — the
melior Lutis — whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal
generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with it; you can no more transmit it in its pristine
flavour, than you can send a kiss. — Have you not tried in some instances to palm off a yesterday’s pun upon a
gentleman, and has it answered? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new from you. It did not
hitch in. It was like picking up at a village ale-house a two days old newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you
resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its
recognitory laugh, must be coinstantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment’s
interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend’s face as from a mirror. Who would consult his
sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear F.) in giving
back its copy?

I cannot image to myself where about you are. When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins’s island comes across me.
Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual
fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest man! You must almost have
forgotten how we look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites do? are they th##v#ng all day long? Merciful heaven!
what property can stand against such a depredation! The kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their primitive
simplicity unEurope-tainted, with those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the
pickpocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were
once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony. — We hear the most
improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which
spoils their scanning? — It must look very odd; but use reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to be regretted, for
if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists.
— Is there much difference to see to between the son of a th##f, and the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do you
bleach in three or in four generations? — I have many questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a
shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. — Do you grow your own hemp? — What is your staple trade,
exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your lock-smiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists.

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous
windows, in pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet corner? — Why did I? — with its
complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first
lady-birds! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is
between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you.
But while I talk, I think you hear me — thoughts dallying with vain surmise —

Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores

Hold far away.

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on
crutches. Girls whom you left children have become sage matrons, while you are tarrying there. The blooming Miss W——r
(you remember Sally W——r) called upon us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off every year. Formerly,
I thought that death was wearing out — I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends. The departure of J.W., two
springs back corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. If you do not make haste to return,
there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine.